【荆棘鸟】第九章 02

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Behind them Tom, the garden rouseabout, finished filling thebig water truck from the bore-drain pump, then started the engine.Not that any amount of water short of a downpour from the skywould help put out a fire this big, but he would be needed to keepthe bags damp, and the people wielding¹ them. As he shoved thetruck down into bottom gear to grind up the far creek² bank helooked back for a moment at the empty head stockman’s house,the two vacant houses beyond it; there was the homestead’s softunderbelly, the only place where flammable things came closeenough to the trees on the far side of the creek to catch. Old Tomlooked westward³, shook his head in sudden decision, and managedto get the truck back across the creek and up the near bank in reverse.They’d never stop that fire out in the paddocks; they’d return.On top of the gully and just beside the head stockman’s house, inwhich he had been camping, he attached the hose to the tank andbegan saturating⁴ the building, then passed beyond it to the twosmaller dwellings⁵, hosed them down. This was where he could helpthe most; keep those three homes so wet they’d never catch.As Meggie rode beside Fee the ominous⁶ cloud in  the west grew, and stronger and stronger on the wind came thesmell of burning. It was growing dark; creatures fleeing from thewest came thicker and thicker across the paddock, kangaroos andwild pigs, frightened sheep and cattle, emus and goannas, rabbitsby the thousands. Bob was leaving the gates open, she noticed asshe rode from Borehead into Billa-Billa; every paddock on Droghedahad a name. But sheep were so stupid they would blunder into afence and stop three feet from an open gate, never see it. 

The fire had gone ten miles when they reached it, and it wasspreading laterally⁷ as well, along a front expanding with everysecond. As the long dry grass and the high wind took it leapingfrom timber stand to timber stand they sat their frightened, jobbinghorses and looked into the west helplessly. No use trying to stopit here; an army couldn’t stop it here. They would have to go backto the homestead and defend that if they could. Already the frontwas five miles wide; if they didn’t push their weary mounts theytoo would be caught, and passed. Too bad for the sheep, too bad.But it couldn’t be helped.Old Tom was still hosing the houses by the creek when theyclattered through the thin blanket of water on the ford⁸.“Good bloke, Tom!” Bob shouted. “Keep it up until it gets toohot to stay, then get out in plenty of time, hear me? No rash heroism;you’re more important than some bits of wood and glass.”The homestead grounds were full of cars, and more headlightswere bouncing and glaring down the road from Gilly; a large groupof men stood waiting for them as Bob turned into the horse yards.“How big is it, Bob?” Martin King asked.“Too big to fight, I think,” said Bob despairingly. “I reckon it’sabout five miles wide and in this wind it’s traveling almost as fastas a horse can gallop⁹. I don’t know if we can save the homestead,but I think Horry ought to get ready to defend his place. He’s goingto get it next, because I don’t see how we can ever stop it.”“Well, we’re overdue¹⁰ for a big fire. The last big one was in 1919.I’ll organize a party to go to Beel-Beel, but there are plenty of usand more coming. Gilly can put out close to five hundred men tofight a fire. Some of us will stay here to help. Thank God I’m westof Drogheda is all I can say.” Bob grinned. “You’re a bloody¹¹ comfort, Martin.”Martin looked around. “Where’s your father, Bob?”“West of the fire, like Bugela. He was out in Wilga musteringsome ewes for the lambing, and Wilga’s at least five miles west ofwhere the fire started, I reckon.”“No other men you’re worried about?”“Not today, thank heavens.”In a way it was like being in a war, Meggie thought as she enteredthe house: a controlled speed, a concern for food and drink, thekeeping up of one’s strength and courage. And the threat of imminentdisaster. As more men arrived they went to join those alreadyin the Home Paddock, cutting down the few trees that had sprungup close to the creek bank, and clearing away any overlong grasson the perimeter¹². Meggie remembered thinking when she first arrivedon Drogheda how much prettier the Home Paddock mighthave been, for compared to the wealth of timber all around it, itwas bare and bleak¹³. Now she understood why. The Home Paddockwas nothing less than a gigantic circular firebreak.Everyone talked of the fires Gilly had seen in its seventy-oddyears of existence. Curiously¹⁴ enough, fires were never a major threatduring prolonged drought, because there wasn’t sufficient grassthen to keep a fire going far. It was times like this, a year or twoafter heavy rain had made the grass grow so long and tinder-lush,that Gilly saw its big fires, the ones which sometimes burned outof control for hundreds of miles. 

Martin King had taken charge of the three hundred men remainingto defend Drogheda. He was the senior grazier of the district, and had fought fires for fifty years.“I’ve got 150,000 acres on Bugela,” he said, “and in 1905 I lostevery sheep and every tree on the place. It took me fifteen years torecover, and I thought for a while I wouldn’t, because wool wasn’tfetching much in those days, nor was beef.”The wind was still howling, the smell of burning was everywhere.Night had fallen, but the western sky was lit to unholy brillianceand lowering smoke was beginning to make them cough. Not longafterward they saw the first flames, vast tongues leaping andwrithing a hundred feet into the smoke, and a roaring came to theirears like a huge crowd overexcited at a football game. The trees onthe western side of the timber ringing the Home Paddock caughtand went up in a solid sheet of fire; as Meggie watched petrifiedfrom the homestead veranda¹⁵ she could see little pygmy silhouettesof men outlined against them, jumping and cavorting¹⁷ like anguishedsouls in Hell.“Meggie, will you get in here and stack those plates on the sideboard,girl! We’re not at a picnic, you know!” came her mother’svoice. She turned away reluctantly.Two hours later the first relay of exhausted¹⁸ men staggered in tosnatch food and drink, gather up their waning¹⁹ strength to go backand fight on. For this had the station women toiled²⁰, to make surethere was stew²¹ and damper bread, tea and rum and beer aplenty,even for three hundred men. In a fire, everyone did what he or shewas best equipped to do, and that meant the women cooked tokeep up the superior physical strength of the men. Case after caseof liquor emptied and was replaced by new cases; black from sootand reeling with fatigue²², the men stood to drink copiously²³ and stuffhuge chunks²⁴ of damper into their mouths, gobble down a platefulof stew when it had cooled, gulp²⁵ a last tumbler of rum, then outagain to the fire. In between trips to the cookhouse Meggie watches the fire, awedand terrified. In its way it had a beauty beyond the beauty of anythingearthly, for it was thing of the skies, of suns so far away theirlight camp coldly, of God and the Devil. The front had gallopedon eastward²⁶, they were completely surrounded now and Meggiecould pick out details the undefined holocaust²⁷ of the front did notpermit. Now there were black and orange and red and white andyellow; a tall tree in black silhouette¹⁶ rimmed²⁸ with an orange crustthat simmered and glowered²⁹; red embers floating and pirouettinglike frolicsome³⁰ phantoms³¹ in the air above, yellow pulsations fromthe exhausted hearts of burned-out trees; a shower of spinningcrimson sparks as a gum exploded; sudden licks of orange-and whiteflames from something that had resisted until now, and finallyyielded its being to the fire. Oh, yes, it was beautiful in the night;she would carry the memory of it all her life.A sudden increase in the wind velocity³² sent all the women upthe wistaria boughs³³ onto the silver iron roof muffled³⁴ in bags, forall the men were out in the Home Paddock. Armed with wet bags,their hands and knees scorched³⁵ even through the bags they wore,they beat out embers on the frying roof, terrified the iron mightgive way under the coals, drop flaming pieces down into thewooden struts³⁶ below. But the worst of the fire was ten miles eastwardon Beel-Beel.Drogheda homestead was only three miles from the easternboundary of the property, it being closest to Gilly. Beel-Beel adjoinedit, and beyond that farther east lay Narrengang. When thewind picked up from forty to sixty miles an hour the whole districtknew nothing but rain could prevent the fire burning on for weeks,and laying waste to hundreds of square miles of prime land.Through the worst of the blaze the houses by the creek had endured,with Tom like a man possessed³⁷ filling his tank truck, hosing, filling again, hosing again. But themoment the wind increased the houses went up, and Tom retreatedin the truck, weeping.“You’d better get down on your knees and thank God the winddidn’t pick up while the front was to the west of us,” said MartinKing. “If it had, not only would the homestead have gone, but usas well. God Jesus, I hope they’re all right on Beel-Beel!”Fee handed him a big glass of neat rum; he was not a youngman, but he had fought as long as it was needed, and directed operationswith a master’s touch.“It’s silly,” she said to him, “but when it looked as if it all mightgo I kept thinking of the most peculiar³⁸ things. I didn’t think of dying,or of the children, or of this beautiful house in ruins. All I couldthink of were my sewing basket, my half-done knitting, the box ofodd buttons I’d been saving for years, my heart-shaped cake pansFrank made me years ago. How could I survive without them? Allthe little things, you know, the things which can’t be replaced, orbought in a shop.”“That’s how most women think, as a matter of fact. Funny, isn’tit, how the mind reacts? I remember in 1905 my wife running backinto the house while I yelled after her like a madman, just to get atambour with a bit of fancywork on it.” He grinned. “But we gotout in time, though we lost the house. When I built the new place,the first thing she did was finish the fancywork. It was one of thoseold-fashioned samplers, you know the sort I mean. And it said‘Home Sweet Home.’” He put down the empty glass, shaking hishead over the strangenes of women. “I must go. Gareth Davies isgoing to need us on Narrengang, and unless I miss my guess sowill Angus on Rudna Hunish.”Fee whitened. “Oh, Martin! So far away?”“The word’s out, Fee. Booroo and Bourke are rallying.” 

For three days more the fire rampaged eastward on a front that kept widening and widening, then came a sudden heavyfall of rain that lasted for nearly four days, and quenched³⁹ every lastcoal. But it had gone over a hundred miles and laid a charred,blackened path twenty miles wide from midway out acrossDrogheda to the boundary of the last property in the Gillanbonedistrict eastward, Rudna Hunish.Until it began to rain no one expected to hear from Paddy, forthey thought him safely on the far side of the burned zone, cut offfrom them by heat in the ground and the still-flaring trees. Had thefire not brought the telephone line down, Bob thought they wouldhave got a call from Martin King, for it was logical that Paddywould strike westward for shelter at Bugela homestead. But whenthe rain had been falling for six hours and there was still no signof him, they began to worry. For almost four days they had beenassuring themselves continually that there was no reason to beanxious, that of course he was just cut off, and had decided⁴⁰ to waituntil he could head for his own home rather than go to Bugela.“He ought to be in by now,” said Bob, pacing up and down thedrawing room while the others watched; 

 

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